NetNames
 | |
| Type: | Subsidiary of Group NBT (Public Company) |
| Industry: | Internet |
| Founded: | 2009 |
| Founder(s): | Group NBT |
| Headquarters: | Prospero House 241 Borough High Street London, SE1 1GA |
| Country: | UK |
| Website: | www.netnames.com |
| Blog: | NetNames Blog |
| LinkedIn: | Netnames |
| Twitter: |  @NetNames
|
| Key People | |
| Geoff Wicks, CEO | |
NetNames is an ICANN accredited registrar and a subsidiary of Group NBT, which provides domain name management, online brand protection, online security, anti-piracy and acquisitions services. The company is based in London and maintains offices in different locations including Cambridge, Copenhagen, Munich, New York, Nice, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Strasbourg and Zurich.
In 2007, NetNames acquired Ascio Technologies and Envisional while INDOM was acquired in 2010. These acquisitions made the company as one of the largest domain name management and online brand protection specialist in Europe.[1]
Services
- Domain Name Management- The company provides registration services for gTLDs, ccTLDs and IDNs, buy and sell of domain names, registrant changes, domain auditing and strategic analysis of portfolio as well as application and outsource management for .brand gTLDs. The company also offers account management services such as invoicing, DNS hosting, domain renewals and other services.
- Brand Protection- Under this category, the company offers anti-counterfeiting services, brand infringement services and reputation monitoring services.In 2009, the company introduced ImageFlare, a new service intended for companies to protect their trademark and logo online.[2]
- Anti-Piracy-The company provides automatic anti piracy monitoring and enforcement services by conducting a thorough investigations on websites, individuals and organizations as well as the revenue generated from pirated products. The company also provide strategic advice on how companies will resolve their problems on piracy.
- NetNames Security- The company provides online security tools such as SSL Certificates, Trust Seals and DNS Security.
Attack on NetNames DNS Servers
On September 4 2011, the DNS Servers of NetNames were attacked by Turkish hackers and redirected the traffic of 186 websites including Acer, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Dell, Harvard University, Interpol, F-Secure, Microsoft, Secunia, UPS, United Parcel Service, The Register, The Daily Telegraph etc.[3] The culprits redirected the sites to a black page with the message, "Hacking is not a crime…We TurkGuvengligi declare this day as World Hackers Day – Have fun." [4]
According to NetNames, the hackers used the method SQL injection and were able to get access to certain information allowing them to submit a re-delegation order to the NetNames System to change the address of the master DNS servers. This enabled the affected name servers to serve incorrect DNS data and redirected the web traffics to the hacker's Turkguvenligi page. NetNames resolved the issues after a few hours and the company disabled one account that has been compromised by the attack.[5] [6]